Status
Available
Genres
Publication
Grove Press (1996), Edition: 1st Grove Press Paperback, 192 pages
Description
In Japan during World War II a group of boys who are evacuated to the country take over a village when the inhabitants flee a plague. The novel describes the way the boys administer the village--breaking into homes for food, burying the dead, caring for the sick--and what happens when the villagers return. By the author of The Silent Cry.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Mifune
From the back of the book: Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids recounts the exploits of fifteen teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime, where they are feared and detested by the local peasants.
So, comparisons have been running wild to Lord of the Flies, which seem apt
In this book, the first I’ve ever read of Oe (and definitely not the last), the invasion of disease, the plague, and a wartime, bloodthirsty, deranged group of villagers, do all of the harm. In fact, the only adult voice of reason is the defector, the soldier who saw the true horrors of war and took his chances in escape. He’d rather be one of them, one of the children, the “useless vermin,” versus being a cold-blooded murderer, a soldier in an unjust war. He’s seen it alright, and to him the onslaught of death by the plague that has no human origins, is a better death than by the insanity of war. After they’ve been sealed in the village by barricade, one of the kids looks up at the person keeping watch with a gun—if the children ever became courageous enough to attempt escape—and he says, “Let’s go back. I’d rather catch the plague than be shot.”
These children, hopeless, considered to be equals to rats by the villagers, surprisingly find a way to adapt to their environment, find and scavenge for food, create a system, although of much idleness (But there was nothing else we could do, so we went on patiently eating.), but with real concern for their fellow comrades. And as an anti-Lord of the Flies, their leader, who fights with an intruding Korean boy, actually learns to appreciate him as one of their own, and they band together and spark a mutual friendship.
When it all comes crashing down, and the plague suddenly erupts in their camp, and the very thing that they most feared at the beginning (abandonment) is reversed as the villagers return, we witness the true origins of brutality: the adults, war-fevered, who do all the world’s killing, all the slaying of the world’s women and children as indiscriminately as cattle, who are the conductors of all the wars that have killed more children than any plague ever could. They return as if nothing even happened. And to their surprise, after their long delay in a corresponding village, presumably “safe,” they are shocked to still see most of the children alive.
The real capabilities of human brutality and violence become evident. War, as a catalyst of abuse and trauma, is similar to an abused child’s long negated trauma, and eventually their own juxtaposed form of mental corruption, a virus, the hate, that attempts to transform anyone it can latch onto. . . . it’s as if the dead can and will be resurrected, bringing less importance to death, and death as only a stage of continuous suffering. We are already ghosts. The children who were little more than pests, were already considered dead.
In a swift 170-some pages, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, is a startling testament to real-life brutality. Oe’s writing is precise and not overly melodramatic, as one may expect, considering the subject matter. In fact, the beats, the pace of the book is like a kindling fire that only grows warmer over time; we aren’t taken to other characters and settings; we stumble onto them naturally, and naturally we care for them and exist with them.
Not purely an anti-war novel, but along the lines of one. It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: any story that depicts war realistically, is in actuality, an anti-war book. And this is definitely one of the best.
So, comparisons have been running wild to Lord of the Flies, which seem apt
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in lots of ways: the focus on children, and henceforth, the focus on society. But this is a book that’s really drenched in the madness of war; although the group of children, as voiced by their leader, do apparently go mad in a very primal sort of way (never as brutal as Flies), it is mostly society, including nearly every adult, that interrupts the children’s passage into society, and not necessarily the children who lose their minds and kill each other. As Oe deliberately says of the adults as the children starve at night: . . . all the malicious people were fast asleep.In this book, the first I’ve ever read of Oe (and definitely not the last), the invasion of disease, the plague, and a wartime, bloodthirsty, deranged group of villagers, do all of the harm. In fact, the only adult voice of reason is the defector, the soldier who saw the true horrors of war and took his chances in escape. He’d rather be one of them, one of the children, the “useless vermin,” versus being a cold-blooded murderer, a soldier in an unjust war. He’s seen it alright, and to him the onslaught of death by the plague that has no human origins, is a better death than by the insanity of war. After they’ve been sealed in the village by barricade, one of the kids looks up at the person keeping watch with a gun—if the children ever became courageous enough to attempt escape—and he says, “Let’s go back. I’d rather catch the plague than be shot.”
These children, hopeless, considered to be equals to rats by the villagers, surprisingly find a way to adapt to their environment, find and scavenge for food, create a system, although of much idleness (But there was nothing else we could do, so we went on patiently eating.), but with real concern for their fellow comrades. And as an anti-Lord of the Flies, their leader, who fights with an intruding Korean boy, actually learns to appreciate him as one of their own, and they band together and spark a mutual friendship.
When it all comes crashing down, and the plague suddenly erupts in their camp, and the very thing that they most feared at the beginning (abandonment) is reversed as the villagers return, we witness the true origins of brutality: the adults, war-fevered, who do all the world’s killing, all the slaying of the world’s women and children as indiscriminately as cattle, who are the conductors of all the wars that have killed more children than any plague ever could. They return as if nothing even happened. And to their surprise, after their long delay in a corresponding village, presumably “safe,” they are shocked to still see most of the children alive.
The real capabilities of human brutality and violence become evident. War, as a catalyst of abuse and trauma, is similar to an abused child’s long negated trauma, and eventually their own juxtaposed form of mental corruption, a virus, the hate, that attempts to transform anyone it can latch onto. . . . it’s as if the dead can and will be resurrected, bringing less importance to death, and death as only a stage of continuous suffering. We are already ghosts. The children who were little more than pests, were already considered dead.
In a swift 170-some pages, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, is a startling testament to real-life brutality. Oe’s writing is precise and not overly melodramatic, as one may expect, considering the subject matter. In fact, the beats, the pace of the book is like a kindling fire that only grows warmer over time; we aren’t taken to other characters and settings; we stumble onto them naturally, and naturally we care for them and exist with them.
Not purely an anti-war novel, but along the lines of one. It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again: any story that depicts war realistically, is in actuality, an anti-war book. And this is definitely one of the best.
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LibraryThing member kant1066
I have the suspicion that this is, as many other reviewers have noted, a five-star book unfortunately awarded a one-star translation. The characters and ideas have so much potential, but the translation is so bad, so stilted, and so unnatural as to constantly draw away from the story. This is the
A young group of hoodlum boys, having been expelled from their reformatory, are forced to trek through endless forests to find a home in a virtual no-man's-land. When they eventually find a village, they discover that many of the animals are sick and dying: the whole village has been infected by the plague. The few remaining healthy residents flee to a neighboring village, locking the boys in a warehouse where they sleep. The novel goes on to describe the nameless narrator's relationship with his brother, a girl that he discovers, and several other boys from the reformatory school. The style (again, perhaps a function of the poor translation) is spare and minimalist, which severely inhibits the reader from being able to sympathize and empathize with the characters.
It has often been compared to "Lord of the Flies," but only because they both have an isolated group of boys who go it alone as their subjects; the similarities end there. The story is an interesting one, wrapped up in politics, the decline of moral authority, and the uneasy tensions between individualism and collectivism. It only could have been told in the aftermath of World War II.
Unfortunately, the translation is probably the worst I've ever read, which ruined the experience.
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only reason for the three-star rating.A young group of hoodlum boys, having been expelled from their reformatory, are forced to trek through endless forests to find a home in a virtual no-man's-land. When they eventually find a village, they discover that many of the animals are sick and dying: the whole village has been infected by the plague. The few remaining healthy residents flee to a neighboring village, locking the boys in a warehouse where they sleep. The novel goes on to describe the nameless narrator's relationship with his brother, a girl that he discovers, and several other boys from the reformatory school. The style (again, perhaps a function of the poor translation) is spare and minimalist, which severely inhibits the reader from being able to sympathize and empathize with the characters.
It has often been compared to "Lord of the Flies," but only because they both have an isolated group of boys who go it alone as their subjects; the similarities end there. The story is an interesting one, wrapped up in politics, the decline of moral authority, and the uneasy tensions between individualism and collectivism. It only could have been told in the aftermath of World War II.
Unfortunately, the translation is probably the worst I've ever read, which ruined the experience.
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LibraryThing member wunderkind
Set in Japan during WWII, this novel is about a group of juvenile delinquents who have been evacuated to a rural mountain village in order to escape the bombing of the cities. However, almost as soon as they get to the village, they are abandoned there as the occupants leave in the face of a
Though there are inevitable comparisons to Lord of the Flies, I think Oe's novel is much more brutal, both in concept and language. He has some truly horrifying descriptions that really vividly convey the childrens' experiences. And unlike Lord of the Flies, which basically posits that children can easily have the veneer of civilization stripped from them, Oe portrays the effects of isolation and anarchy on adults as even more terrible. Needless to say, it's a pretty depressing and troubling book, but well worth reading. I wonder, though, if Oe meant his message to apply universally, or if there was some cultural commentary about the war's effect on the Japanese populace; the latter would be really interesting.
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potential plague. The boys are forced to fend for themselves, with mixed results, until the villagers return.Though there are inevitable comparisons to Lord of the Flies, I think Oe's novel is much more brutal, both in concept and language. He has some truly horrifying descriptions that really vividly convey the childrens' experiences. And unlike Lord of the Flies, which basically posits that children can easily have the veneer of civilization stripped from them, Oe portrays the effects of isolation and anarchy on adults as even more terrible. Needless to say, it's a pretty depressing and troubling book, but well worth reading. I wonder, though, if Oe meant his message to apply universally, or if there was some cultural commentary about the war's effect on the Japanese populace; the latter would be really interesting.
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LibraryThing member mimal
fraudio, summer-2013, japan, nobel-laureate, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, translation, published-1958, plague-disease, slit-yer-wrists-gloomy, wwii, ouch, lifestyles-deathstyles, debut, next
Read from August 14 to 18, 2013
gbox
Narrated by Eduardo Ballerini
One wouldn't want to grapple with this
7 likes
Read from August 14 to 18, 2013
gbox
Narrated by Eduardo Ballerini
One wouldn't want to grapple with this
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if on a downer, you know, the back yard filled with black dogs and storms torrenting within the four walls of one's chest; this is human misery on a stick.7 likes
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LibraryThing member Donovan
Oe's interest in children and internal conflicts brought on by external forces is clearly being developed in this novel, and with great effect for the reader. This book is just as grisly as the title would lead you to believe, perhaps moreso. Yet it does have moments of peace and beauty, and does
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an amazing job of capturing childhood innocence meeting up with the most brutal conditions of human life. In some ways it recalls 'Lord of the Flies' for me, but I think I prefer this book to that in many ways, though both are excellent. Show Less
LibraryThing member NativeRoses
Children are swept into the events of this world. A good book to compare to Lord of the Flies.
LibraryThing member Cecilturtle
This incredibly harsh novel about hate, violence and pestilence is definitely an emotional investment. The reader is torn with sympathy for these children desperate for guidance and love and with horror at their violence and wildness. Oe, with few words, is able to portray a world of betrayal,
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fear, anger and love. While I had tossed all eventuality of hope, the masterful ending actually leaves room for redemption. A tremendous book which will not leave the reader indifferent. Show Less
LibraryThing member goldiebear
Honestly, I didn't really care for this book. It was obscene in places and I found it a bit disturbing. The ending was awful. This book was translated from Japanese and I could tell that in some places some of the translation lost. I kept hoping that something more was going to happen and it
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didn't. That hope pushed me to finish, but I was disappointed in the end. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheBookJunky
A translation of the Japanese work by the 1994 Nobel Prize winner. Written in 1958. The tale of a group of reformatory school boys, evacuated to a remote area in the mountains to escape the war, but they never escape their lack of freedom and can never escape the oppression and cruelty of society.
LibraryThing member leahdawn
Very Lord of the Flies. Truly sad.
LibraryThing member DinoReader
An examination of the difficulty of resisting organized and institutional evil.
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This is the first book by Nobel prize winner Oe, written when he was only 23. The plot is simple and the prose is spare. A group of reform school boys is evacuated to a remote mountain village in Japan during World War II. The villagers treat them as less than human, and abandon them when it
The book has been compared with Lord of the Flies (it was written before Lord of the Flies). However, in Nip the Buds the boys are sympathetic characters who maintain their humanity after being cut off from civilization.
The relationship between the unnamed narrator and his brother, one of the themes of the book, is poignant and heartbreaking. The novel ends tragically when civilization is once again imposed on the boys.
Oe has stated that he wrote the book for Japanese readers of his own age, i.e. those who came of age during World War II. He said, 'All I had to do was let my war experiences, not factual but mental, take their own course.' (Note this means experiences as a civilian. There is no combat or bombing etc. in this book).
I highly recommend this book.
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appears that a plague has broken out.The book has been compared with Lord of the Flies (it was written before Lord of the Flies). However, in Nip the Buds the boys are sympathetic characters who maintain their humanity after being cut off from civilization.
The relationship between the unnamed narrator and his brother, one of the themes of the book, is poignant and heartbreaking. The novel ends tragically when civilization is once again imposed on the boys.
Oe has stated that he wrote the book for Japanese readers of his own age, i.e. those who came of age during World War II. He said, 'All I had to do was let my war experiences, not factual but mental, take their own course.' (Note this means experiences as a civilian. There is no combat or bombing etc. in this book).
I highly recommend this book.
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Subjects
Language
Original language
English